Thursday, August 31, 2006

The Other Side of the Obesity Debate

It seems to me that the condemnation of "obesity" in the media now rivals the condemnation of "racism". Since the average American is already wide and getting wider, this would seem to be about as cockeyed as condemning people for preferring other people who are similar to themselves.

An essential prop for what seems largely to be a moral crusade is scientific research which purports to show that fat is bad for you. And research claiming that is about all you ever hear of via the media. Skeptical voices are suppressed. It is largely for that reason that I recently started my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog.

If you go there now you will find a pretty good demolition of the latest "scientific" scare story.

I myself dislike blonde jokes and never make them. I know too many smart blondes. But the idea that blondes tend to be dumb seems to me a harmless urban myth that helps non-blondes cope with the fact that "Gentlemen prefer blondes".

But all that may be coming to an end. An Australian conservative politician, Bruce Flegg, was apologizing for various blunders he had made while campaigning when he made an even bigger blunder:

"I think it's just a case that occasionally you have a bit of a blonde moment and I don't expect to have too many more of those," Dr Flegg said.

You can guess the uproar. There is a good comment (by a blonde) on that and various other recent absurdities here.

But it seems to be OK for Leftist politicians to have "blonde moments". Dr Flegg's Leftist opponent has just said that he had "perpetual blonde moments" -- with no apparent resultant outcry.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Senior Brit Defends the Sign of the Cross

A player in a Scottish Catholic football team was recently reprimanded by the police for blessing himself with the sign of the cross while on field. It is good to see that one senior member of the British government, Ruth Kelly, has attacked the reprimand on obvious grounds:

"I am surprised because this has traditionally been a country which has valued religious diversity - and cultural and racial diversity as well - and where there has been freedom of expression, both to express religious symbols but also other cultural symbols as well."

If only because of their history of indomitable resistance to Islam, I like the Sikhs. But the California Sikhs seem to have caught the California disease of wanting to stop religious messages that deviate from the merely feelgood:

"A Contra Costa Sikh leader is denouncing a pamphlet from an El Sobrante church that tells Sikhs their holy book is wrong and warns them they face eternal hell unless they receive Jesus as their savior...

J.P. Singh, president of El Sobrante Gurdwara Sahib, the Sikh Center of the San Francisco Bay Area, said the pamphlet is objectionable because "it belittles another religion." "To coexist in this country in love and peace, I think there has to be an acceptance of other people's religions," Singh said...

Brandenburg said he has distributed the pamphlet off and on for eight or 10 years and that the message it conveys is hardly new. He said he was surprised to receive an e-mail from a local non-Sikh merchant characterizing it as "hate speech." "That message has been around for 2,000 years -- now it's hate speech?" Brandenburg said.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Australian Leftists Still Trying to Prove that they are Kinder and Wiser than Everybody Else

We read:

"Childcare workers have been instructed not to use the words "no" and "don't" because it is feared they will stunt a child's development. The terms "good boy" and "good girl" are also frowned on as they are considered sexist.

The rules -- taught to childcare students -- have angered Australian Family Association campaigners, who say it's another example of out-of-control political correctness.

And some childcare workers fear the guidelines are not allowing "children to be children" and refuse to obey them.

Robert Henderson, a Nebraska State trooper, in his private time joined the Ku Klux Klan. There was no suggestion that his membership affected his performance of his duties but he was still fired over it. Under the State government's contract with the State Patrol, the case went into binding arbitration:

"Arbitrator Paul J. Caffera, a New York lawyer, last week overturned the firing. He said Henderson was entitled to his First Amendment rights of free speech and that the state violated the troopers' contract, in part when it fired Henderson"

Sunday, August 27, 2006

As expected, the takeover of the San Diego cross by the Feds has not discouraged the Christianity-haters. I am an atheist myself but I am profoundly grateful for what Christianity has wrought.

In the latest round of the battle, the ACLU is suing the Federal government with a claim that the government is violating the First Amendment by displaying the cross on its land. Given the ACLU rewrite of the First Amendment, maybe the display does violate their First Amendment, but nobody reading the actual First Amendment would think so.

The "Anti-Christian Lawyers' Union" would be the most accurate way of describing the mission of the ACLU

In case readers here are not aware of it Chris Brand is probably the most politically incorrect blogger on the internet today. You won't always agree with him. I don't always agree with him either. But it is good to see someone with a devotion to telling it like it is and damn the consequences.

Like myself, he is a former psychology academic, so is one of a rare breed indeed -- considering how Leftist social science professors tend to be. His academic specialty is the study of IQ. Just that field of study automatically makes him a "racist", of course.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Racial Group Condemns Racial Grouping

Contestants on the next "Survivor" reality show on CBS are going to be divided into four tribes based on race. This has provoked outrage from all sorts of whiners. One is NYC councilman John Liu. We read of him:

"Liu, who is Asian-American, said he was launching a campaign urging CBS to pull the show because it could encourage racial division and promote negative typecasts. He and a coalition of officials, including the council's black, Latino and Asian caucus, planned to rally at City Hall on Friday.

"Meow. A district judge has been asked to decide whether that word is a harmless taunt or grounds for misdemeanor harassment. Jeannette police charged a 14-year-old boy for "meowing" whenever he sees his neighbor, 78-year-old Alexandria Carasia.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Hotel Manager Cleared

When a British hotel manager sacked a black she caught stealing, he accused her of racism and was taken seriously enough for the matter to go to court. Happily, the manager has now been cleared of wrongdoing:

"The tribunal panel said it was satisfied anyone in Mr Coke's position would have been suspended by Mrs Downey, given she believed he was guilty of an offence.

Does that sound like good advice? Whether it is or not, you are not allowed to say it. An article offering that advice evoked such protest that it was rapidly taken down. The article is however just up on Political Correctness Watch so you can make your own mind up about it. The fact that the article was soundly based in a lot of scholarly research was probably what made it so obnoxious.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

California Bans Negative Comments about Homosexuality

No room for Christian teachings in California schools from now on

We read:

"California public schools could not demean gay, bisexual or transgender orientations under fiercely controversial legislation approved Monday by the Assembly... SB 1437 would ban teachers, textbooks, instructional materials or school activities from reflecting ''adversely'' upon people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender....

Under Kuehl's bill, public school teachers could not inform their students, for example, that homosexuality is immoral or wrong. Campaign for Children and Families, a nonprofit advocacy group, claims that SB 1437 would ban textbooks that define marriage as between a man and a woman; or sex education that displays traditional examples of male and female sexual development; or homecoming games that feature only a male king and a female queen as campus representatives.

"The claim that Muslims are discriminated against by the police is undermining the fight against terrorism, a senior Scotland Yard officer has said. Chief Superintendent Simon Humphrey said it is 'wholly unacceptable' to paint Asians as victims and accused police chiefs who do so of undermining the efforts of their colleagues....

Mr Humphrey's sharp rebuke carries particular weight because he speaks on behalf of 330 Met superintendents. His comments appeared to show the majority of senior officers agree with public support for profiling... He told the Daily Mail: ' Unfortunately a small, extremely vocal and potentially very influential minority are trying to hijack the terrorism issue and turn it into a debate on racism. 'They are undermining the objectives of the organisation and rank and file officers who are doing their utmost to police fairly...

'It is wholly unacceptable to continue to portray the Asian community as victims.... 'What is essentially an operational policing issue should not be turned into a debate about race and religion. Although these feature as part of a complex backdrop, let's not lose sight of the fact that this is about criminality and mass murder.'

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Blogs and Copyright

Most blogs that comment on current affairs routinely break the law. Copyright law allows you to republish nothing without prior permission other than brief excerpts from the text of an article. Political blogs however routinely republish more than that -- pictures in particular. Time constraints mean that seeking prior permission to republish a picture would be unviable.

I have never however heard of a blogger being prosecuted for a breach of copyright law and I presume that is because most bloggers are willing to take down a post if someone has a legitimate objection to it. Internet publishing is fundamentally different to print publishing because a newspaper cannot withdraw all copies of what it has published whereas a blogger can cease to make available what he has written with just one mouseclick.

This blog has however been holier than most. When Scott was posting here, most of his postings were re-writes (journalists have to be good at those) and my posts normally include only very brief excepts from the original article.

Since I have been posting here, however, I have from time to time included pictures with my posts. Scott, the owner of this blog, is however a journalist so has to be more careful about these things than most of us. So he has requested that I put up no more pictures without permission of the picture owners. So my posts here will be going picture-free from now on.

As most readers are aware, however, I have from the beginning put up mirror sites for all my postings (See here or here) and I will continue to include pictures there -- as those sites are entirely my own responsibility.

The controversy over the actions of cricket umpire Darrell Hair has really taken off. It even got a spot on NPR (which must be a first for cricket) and there is huge outrage in Pakistan, of course. Like the rest of the subcontinent, Pakistan is cricket-crazy.

Unlike most people unfairly accused of racism, however, Hair is not apologizing and says that nobody will force him into retirement. Details here

Update

Champion Australian cricketer Shane Warne has expressed amazement at the actions of the Pakistan team and said Hair was unfairly accused of racism.

In a rare departure from form, the BBC is screening a movie called "Shoot the Messenger" that gives an apparently realistic picture of black British life -- with mention of black crime being prominent. It has therefore been accused of "stereotyping" blacks. But "stereotyping" implies that the picture given is fase -- when it clearly is not. The extraordinary high crime rate among people of African ancestry is incontrovertible. But apparently, you still must avoid mentioning it, even though the drama concerned was in fact written by a black writer. Details here

You don't have to follow the Olympic games for long before you notice something striking: The fastest runners are mostly black and the fastest swimmers are nearly all white. And blacks are more likely to drown in swimming pools too. So for some reason that is irrelevant here, blacks do seem to be at some disadvantage when it comes to swimming. But you are not allowed to mention that. GOP Congessional candidate for Florida, Tramm Hudson recently said:

"I grew up in Alabama and I understand and I know this from my own experiences that blacks aren't the best swimmers or may not even know how to swim".

The allegedly Christian charity, World Vision, is in the business of censorship. When one of their donors tried to send to the child he was sponsoring some pictures of black soldiers from the child's country -- pictures taken during World War 2 -- World Vision refused to forward them -- allegedly to protect the child! See here

I used to be a World Vision donor until their blatantly anti-Israel bias became too much for me. They are as much a political as a charitable organization. Photos of soldiers may be bad but Arabs blowing up Jews is fine. See here for a quick summary of that.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Tough Umpire a "Racist"

There would hardly be a sports fan alive who has not at some time felt that an umpire or referee has been unfair and biased against his team. And it certainly happens in the world's most popular bat-and-ball game -- cricket.

An Australian umpire, Darrell Hair, well-known for strict adherence to the rules, has however now been called a "racist" for his actions. He made the mistake of suspecting a cheating incident by a Pakistan cricket team:

"Pakistan captain Imran Khan ripped into the controversial umpire... Under the headline "Hair the Hitler does it again", Imran continued: "Hair is one of those characters when he wears the white umpires' coat, he metamorphoses into a mini-Hitler."

Ramiz Raja, another former Pakistan captain who was commentating on the Test, was also scathing of Hair. "The players from the sub-continent universally feel that he is biased, even to the extent of being a racist," he claimed."

"A standing room only crowd looked on Thursday as Fadi Ahmad Abdel Latif was handed a guilty verdict for threatening the life of PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen and inciting to kill Jews.

A unanimous panel of judges in a Copenhagen city court found Adbel Latif, the spokesman for the Danish branch of radical Muslim organisation Hizb-ut-Tahir, guilty on all three counts for which he was charged, including for distributing fliers in 2004 urging Mulsims to 'kill their leaders' if they prevented them from helping their 'brothers' fighting in Fallujah.

He was also convicted for threatening the lives of Jews by calling on Muslims to 'kill them all, wherever you find them'.

There is an excellent article by the courageous Ruth Malhotra -- commenting on her recent victory over the speech code at Georgia Tech. I will not try to summarize the article. It deserves a read in full. But this little excerpt says a lot:

"Our peaceful and respectful protests -- including one against the feminist play "Vagina Monologues" and another against affirmative action - were aggressively silenced. But Georgia Tech has done nothing to stop the blatant personal attacks that we have encountered.

The "tolerant" left has used explicit racial and sexist slurs against us... We have even been physically threatened. All the while the administration stood silent"

Monday, August 21, 2006

Racist Black

Prominent black politician and civil rights activist Andrew Young:

"When asked if Wal-Mart meant the death of mom-and-pop stores, Young told the Los Angeles Sentinel, "They ran the mom-and-pop stores out of my neighborhood, but you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. "First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs. Very few black people own these stores," Young said.

"Nissan North America Inc. has ended its controversial billboard ad campaign that sparked protests by activists who characterized the ads as an insult to African-Americans. Nissan sponsored billboards in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles that referred to "Black History Month," with the word "history" crossed out and replaced with "future."

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Airport terror scare shutdown 'racist'

We read:

"A Pakistani woman whose daughter's carry-on luggage caused an airport to shut down for nine and a half hours says it was her ethnic background, not a few bottles of suspicious liquids, that set off security officials....

The terminal was evacuated at 11.25am after two bottles of liquid in the bag initially tested positive for explosives residue twice, and a canine team also got a positive hit. Chemical tests of the bottles' contents later turned up no explosives, said Capt. Jack Chambers, head of the State Police Special Operations unit.

US authorities banned the carrying of liquids onto flights last week after British officials made arrests in an alleged plot to blow up US-bound planes using explosives disguised as drinks and other common products".

A roadmaking machine that lays tar might reasonably be referred to by its proud owners as a "tar baby", one might think. And putting up a pictorial representation of the name in the form of a black baby would seem to be doing no damage to anyone. But the "sensitive" brigade have called it "a horrible racial slur". Apparently it is wrong to suggest that blacks have black babies. So the machine has now had a repaint job. Details here.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Criticism of Russian Bigshots is "Racism"?

The chairman of a British soccer club recently referred to the owners of a rival club as "a bunch of shysters from Siberia". "Shyster" is British slang for someone operating on the margins of legality. Predatory lawyers are often referred to as shysters. Since the owners of the rival club are in fact Russian "oligarchs", the comment would seem to have some justification but a complaint has nonetheless been lodged saying that the comment is "racist" Details here.

A late-night DJ made a prank phone-call to a Japanese restaurant during his show and laughed at the poor English of the person who answered the phone. Later he rang a Chinese restaurant and expressed surprise when someone who spoke good English replied. He lost his job over such "racially insensitive remarks". Details here and here.

"A Miss America pageant judge was wrong to ask Miss New Jersey about her views on "The Sopranos," the contestant and some Italian-American groups said.

The judge asked Alicia Renee Luciano what she thought about the show during an interview segment of Saturday night's pageant in Atlantic City. The HBO drama focuses on fictional mob boss Tony Soprano as he juggles organized crime and his family life in suburban New Jersey".

It's not a great joke and equating the settlement of America with the holocaust is obnoxious but the comedian was attacked on the grounds that the joke was antisemitic! How a frantically anti-racist joke can be antisemitic escapes me but there you have it.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

"Pet", "Dear", "Love", "Darling" and "Sweetheart" Now Incorrect in England

We read:

"The term "pet" has been ingrained in the language of the North East for generations... But in a radical and almost certainly doomed move, Newcastle City Council has instructed its workers to refrain from addressing women in the traditional Geordie manner.

No matter that everyone grows up hearing affectionate greetings such as "Alreet, pet?" and "Howay, hinny", a council edict has proclaimed that they are potentially patronising, sexist and insulting and should therefore be treated with as much contempt as a Sunderland fan at St James' Park....

The trouble stems from an equality and diversity course run by the council for its staff. Its aim is to help them to "treat people with dignity and respect". Part of the course, a council spokesman explained, involves teaching workers "not to use colloquialisms that some may find offensive". "Pet" and "hinny" appear on the blacklist, alongside more universal terms, including "dear", "love", "darling" and "sweetheart".

"A Muslim candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates was targeted by a protester who held a sign reading "Islam sucks" and wore a T-shirt with the slogan, "This mind is an Allah-free zone."

Montgomery County police warned the protester, Timothy Truett, after the Saturday incident that he would be subject to arrest on trespassing charges if he steps onto Saqib Ali's property in the next year.

Truett, 46, of Montgomery Village, sat in a folding chair on the cul-de-sac outside Ali's Gaithersburg home, which doubles as his campaign office"

"Georgia Tech announced on Tuesday that it has agreed to remove a policy banning hate speech on campus to end a federal lawsuit filed by two students...

The lawsuit alleged that the school policy discriminates against Christian and Jewish students by barring them from speaking out against homosexuality and other issues.

Ruth Malhotra, a conservative Christian, one of the students represented by the ADF, said she had her free speech "stifled, hindered and threatened" by the policy. The other student, Orit Sklar is president of Hillel, the Jewish student group"

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

A Tongue-Tied Movie

Castro-loving moviemaker Oliver Stone has just made a new movie -- "World Trade Center" -- that is good entertainment and which has been praised even by conservative critics of Stone. It focuses on small human dramas rather than on anything political. But, even so, there is still one very strange thing about it. As one viewer comments:

"Still, there was something strange about the movie, and I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realized: As far as I can remember, it never mentions the cause of the 9/11 attacks: Islam. Specifically, those forms of Islam most closely aligned to the teachings of Mohammed. It's like a Holocaust movie without the Nazis".

The Senator appears simply to have forgotten the guy's name and used a nonsense substitute but some deep delvers have discovered that "macaca" has a derogatory meaning in some European languages. Since Sen. Allen was speaking English, that would not appear relevant but the Senator had to apologize anyway.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Murals depicting history are too much for those who don't like the truths that history tells us. I mentioned a previous example on April 24. Such murals must be taken down or covered over!

The latest controversy surrounds a historic mural in a historic building in DC occupied by the EPA. We read:

"The mural that is sparking the most debate depicts American Indians brutally scalping and murdering white settlers. All the women are naked, including one who is on all fours as a male Indian stands behind her, seizing her hair."

If you are a white reporter for the BBC, it looks like you don't have a big future. The BBC's "diversity" Tsar doesn't think you can report accurately:

"Mary Fitzpatrick, who is consulted on all decisions about television content at the BBC, said the 'cultural accuracy' among reporting staff was on her hitlist. She said there were too many white reporters reporting from non-white nations, particularly in Africa."

Monday, August 14, 2006

Another Team-name Controversy

We read:

"Some leaders of Buffalo's black community say they consider the new name for the city's minor-league basketball team, the Silverbacks, offensive and racially insensitive. They say a silverback - an adult male gorilla - is an inappropriate nickname for a team with a large number of black players because bigots have referred to blacks as "gorillas," "apes" and "monkeys." ...

The team, which plays in the American Basketball Association, has carried the name Silverbacks since May. The team played as the Rapids last year under former owner Gary Nice, who sold the franchise to co-owners Dan Robbie and Todd Wier last December. The new owners had to change the team's nickname because Nice retained the rights to the Rapids name.

Wier asked the team for input, and Modie Cox - who serves as a player and assistant coach - came up with the winning idea. A silverback is an older male gorilla who is a respected leader of his group, said Cox, a devoted fan of Discovery Channel's Animal Planet network. "We're going to go out there; we're going to demand that respect," he said of the team."

A retired police chief has at last spoken the unvarnished truth but is said to have "inflamed" the debate by doing so:

"As leaders of Britain's Muslims appealed to Prime Minister Tony Blair to reduce tensions after last week's terror alert, a former London police chief has inflamed the debate by blaming Muslims for terrorist networks in the country.

Everything he said was simple common sense but we know how rare that is these days. In the Army, we would have said that the truth of what he said "stood out like dog's balls", but truth is apparently unimportant in these matters.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

"Islamic Fascists" Incorrect?

Some recent remarks by GWB have come under fire:

"The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom," Bush said....

The Islamabad-based newspaper "Ausaf" writes today that the words are an "insult to the religion" of Islam".

Since GWB was specifically referring to the London bomb-plotters and their ilk, what he said could surely be an insult to Islam only if the whole of Islam had similar attitudes to the bomb-plotters. The Islamic critique of GWB is therefore rather revealing in what it says about Islam.

Keith Burgess Jackson has argued that GWB's use of the term "Fascist" was incorrect, on the ground that there are some important differences between the Islamists and the prewar Fascists. There were however also large differences between the various groups of prewar Fascists. Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, for instance, initially used to expel from his party anyone who made antisemitic utterances!

The word "Fascist" was coined by Benito Mussolini and he derived it from the "fasci" in his early movement. In Italian, "fasci" is an ordinary word for "bands", in the original sense -- i.e. some things or some people bound together in some way. So Mussolini's original "fasci" were small bands of (generally thuggish) socialist activists bound together by a common aim and cause.

And Mussolini got the idea that having everyone marching together in lockstep was the ideal from German philosopher GFW Hegel, who was also the inspiration of Karl Marx. Mussolini was himself an important Marxist theoretician in his day.

So the Islamic aim of having everybody bowing down together to Mohammed and Islamic law is in fact much the same idea as that put forward by Mussolini and Hegel. Only the details differ. GWB was using the term reasonably.

John Reid is Britain's Home Secretary, one of the most important figures in Britain's center-Left government. So, given Britain's often ludicrous degree of political correctness, it was refreshing to read that he recently said:

"We have to get away from this daft so-called politically correct notion that anybody who wants to talk about immigration is somehow a racist. That isn't the case.".

He is obviously aware that the high rate of immigration into Britain by low-skilled people is very unpopular with many Britons and is clearing the way for more immigration restrictions.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

A Dubious Blessing From California

We read:

"Without debate, the Senate on Thursday sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill that would make California the first state to prohibit college and university administrators from censoring student newspapers....

Under the bill, campus administrators still could discipline students for publishing hate speech."

"The Western press - usually so careful to condemn hate speech - is utterly silent about Arab racism. But a European paper recently published a cartoon portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a Nazi, secure that no rabbi would issue threats that could cost the editors their heads.

"Outreach" to blacks by officials of mostly white schools is always praised. School officials often go to the limits of the law to attract black students. So, obviously, a mostly Hispanic school that wants to reach out to whites should also be warmly praised -- No?

Not so fast! The mostly Hispanic Preston Hollow Elementary School in Dallas, Texas, has been doing just that. The school is 66% Hispanic and only 18 percent white and the school officials want more "diversity" than that. So they have gone as close to the limits of the law as they can to encourage nearby white parents to choose that school.

And what do the "diversity"-mongers think of that? The school is being sued by a group of Latino parents over its discriminatory procedures. I wonder if the ACLU will be stepping up to defend the school -- as they no doubt would if black outreach was being attacked?

Or is "diversity" just a code-word for "blackness" that only dummies take literally? You be the judge. Details here

Friday, August 11, 2006

Must not Stimulate Muslims

We read:

"Malaysian authorities fined organizers of a concert by the chart-topping Pussycat Dolls for allowing the singers to wear skimpy costumes and for their "sexually suggestive routines," a news report said Wednesday."

The L.A. Slimes has taken up the story about the twisted motto on the wall of a California V.A. facility. It is a parody of the West Point motto of "Duty, Honor, Country". My original post on the matter was on July 6th..

The Slimes gives a justification of the altered motto that might wash if we were not aware of the great anti-military hostility among California's movers and shakers. The Slimes did deign to mention, however, a considerable level of hostility to the altered motto among veterans and others.

"Racist" to Bust Black Pot Smokers

Good old NYC again

We read:

"The NYPD disproportionately targets poor, black and Hispanic neighborhoods when enforcing marijuana smoking-in-public laws, according to a hotly debated new study....

The NYPD says that this type of enforcement goes along with its focus on where the heaviest crime patterns exist and is part of the department's successful quality-of-life policing strategy..."

Second Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing a case that arose when a Nigerian pastor leased two billboards that simply quoted scriptures from Levitcus about the sinfulness of homosexuality.

Guy Molinari, then Borough President of Staten Island, where the billboards were located, used his official position to press the billboard company into covering up the message. He also obtained and subsequently publicized the name and address of the pastor. The pastor then received death threats.

The police investigated the pastor for "hate speech" but would do nothing about the threats. Christian lawyers are now asking for the official censorship to be declared illegal. Details here.

Leftist Hate-Speech OK

We read:

"Do they want war because they have the devil inside them?" demanded Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking of the Jewish state. "I say to them from here, from Iran, once and a thousand times: Murderers! Cowards! Frankly, their fate has been sealed, from the depths of the people's soul."

And when was that comment made? About the same time Mel Gibson made his now-famous remarks. There was a torrent of criticism from the media about Gibson's antisemitism but what did we hear of Chavez's antisemitism? Virtually nothing. And Chavez is a much more important person on the world scene than Gibson is.

Consolation Prize for Losing the Georgia Primary

For a previous comment on McKinney, see here. For a comment on the primary, see here

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Dirty Minds

We read:

"A woman in Columbus, Ohio, may lose her longtime vanity license plate because the state now says it's obscene. Pat Niple has had a plate with the letters NWTF. She says it stands for "Northwood Tree Farm"...

At a BMV office, Niple says she was told the letters are an abbreviation popular online. She says a clerk whispered it stands for a phrase beginning with, "Now what the..."

A wonder they allow her to use her own name. "Niple" is pretty suggestive, isn't it?

Horror: Katrina Memorial Bears Jesus' Face

We read:

"Alarmed by newspaper reports that a hurricane memorial in St. Bernard Parish will feature a cross bearing a likeness of the face of Jesus, the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana is reminding parish officials of the Constitution's separation of church and state.

Never one to back down, Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez has a simple reply: "They can kiss my ass."

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

"Terrorist" Joke Falls Flat

Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka are three of the countries where there is a big following for the world's most popular bat-and-ball game -- cricket. And cricket does tend to be taken very seriously wherever it is played. But cricketers are sportsmen and, as such, not the world's most sensitive types.

So when Sri Lanka was playing South Africa recently, one of the Australian cricket commenters put his foot in it with what was obviously intended as a joke. One of the South African players, Hashim Amla, is a Muslim of Indian origin and, being devout, wears a large black beard. So he looks a bit like Osama Bin Laden and, in private, he has obviously been nicknamed as "The terrorist". Australians are very big on joky nicknames for people.

So when former Australian batsman Dean Jones was on a TV commentary team covering a match between Sri Lanka and South Africa in Colombo, Jones commented: "The terrorist has got another wicket", when Amla took the catch that dismissed one of the Sri Lankan batsmen.

"Police have seized and banned school textbooks carrying fake portraits of the noblest messenger of Allah, Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH) and arrested the publisher in Uttar Pradesh state after religious authorities demanded the death penalty for him and the book's writer, an official said on Friday".

Monday, August 07, 2006

Must not Refer to the Confederacy

We read:

"The NCAA will consider expanding its ban of championship events in South Carolina, possibly disallowing baseball and football teams from hosting postseason games, because the Confederate flag is displayed on Statehouse grounds.

A college athletic organizaton wants to make policy for a State? Do the voters get a say?

"Crackers", "These people", "Tar"

The good ol' double standard again

Senior California Democrat Don Perata seems to think it is OK for him to utter racial slurs. In one speech recently he managed three of them -- or what would be three of them if it had been a conservative speaking.

San Diego is just over the border from Tijuana so San Diegans see the illegal immigrant flood close up and not many of them like it -- so they do tend to protest about it.

To Italian-American Perata, however, the San Diegans concerned are just "crackers" (lower-class white ignoramuses). It's a term that goes close to being the white equivalent of "n*gger". But Perata is a Democrat so racial slurs against whites are just fine and dandy. I am sure a lot of the good citizens of San Diego who are protesting do not consider themselves as "crackers", however.

Amusingly he also used the word "tar" in a way very similar to "tar baby". He said: "if you start getting engaged with these people, you get tar all over yourself.". When conservatives use the term "tar baby" to refer to something sticky, that is held to be very bad because tar is also black but apparently tar loses it blackness when a Leftist uses the word.

Finally, Perata's use of "these people" would probably be seen as derogatory if a conservative had used it. Third-party Presidential candidate Ross ("giant sucking sound") Perot got roundly criticized for addressing a meeting of blacks as "you people" in 1992. I personally don't think that Perot was "insensitive" for using such phraseology but I am not a Leftist.

"Racist" for Manager to Fire Black Thief

Another nutty story from Britain: A hotel manager watched a black employee stealing money -- on a videotape from a security camera. She showed him the tape and fired him for what he did.

Now he is claiming that his firing was "racism" and a British government tribunal appears to be taking the claim seriously. Details here

When I was a kid at school, fat kids got called "fatty" and if you were being derogatory "fatso". They all seemed to survive it pretty well.

The "Indian Names" Nonsense Bubbles on

The Methodist McMurry university in Texas seems to be the latest victim of the strange compulsion to avoid naming college sporting teams after anything Indian. See here. They have long called their athletic teams "The Indians" but the NCAA has both banned that and now rejected an appeal against the ban.

Apparently their team name was an example of 'nicknames that demean and offend our Native American sisters and brothers.'. The reasoning supporting that conclusion must be mightily convoluted. It certainly escapes me. The following comment by a McMurry graduate seems a lot more straightforward to me: "'Forcing a school to get rid of its Indian mascot,' he added, 'does nothing more than discriminate more against Indians.'"

The idea that "must not mention Indians" is respectful of them is reminiscent of Orwell's inverted "Newspeak". It seems disrespectful to me.

Funnily enough, I used that term too -- way back in 1970. But I used it to refer to people who were not Christian believers but who were nonetheless culturally Protestant -- as I am. So Sullivan uses it for people who ARE Christians and I use it for people who are not.

Objecting to politicized Christianity is nothing new. Many fundamentalists reject involvement in the affairs of "the world" -- Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Exclusive Brethren etc. After all, Jesus said to Pilate: "My Kingdom is not of this world".

But Sullivan is clearly not of that ilk. Although he defines it as politicized Christianity, he uses the term much more loosely -- usually to refer to anybody who is both a conservative and a Christian. See his recent diatribe against Hugh Hewitt and Hewitt's reply. In particular, he uses it to refer to anybody who rejects homosexual marriage on Christian grounds. He claims to be a Christian himself but that claim would seem as shallow as the rest of his thought. Romans chapter 1 makes it clear that homosexuals are condemned by God. So unless you can be a Christian without accepting the New Testament, ALL Christians are "Christianists" and Sullivan is not a Christian.

So much for a silly usage which serves essentially as no more than a hate-speech term for conservative Christians.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Censorship by Florida Cop

A black schoolteacher, Jauhnisha Oliver, was handing out at an anti-gang rally a free magazine she had created that was designed to promote community involvement. Some of kids pictured in it were recognized by a local cop, Gregory Kirk, as gang members. So he took it on himself to obstruct distribution of the magazine. He obviously thought he was cop, judge and jury all rolled up into one. He had certainly never heard of the First Amendment.

So what's one rogue cop, you say? Get this: His police chief, Eugene Savage, is backing him up! "Savage defended Kirk's actions, saying Oliver needed police permission to hand out the magazines"

Arizona State University tried to block a student anti-abortion group from holding a meeting on its grounds to publicize their cause. At first the students were told that it was just not allowed, then they were told that they would have to pay a $350.00 fee.

When the students pointed out that other student groups had not been similarly restricted, the university backed down but then said that the students would have to take out an insurance policy in order to hold their event. That stumped the students so they are now suing the university for violating their free speech rights.

The University's lawyer "said the group wasn't allowed to host the event for safety reasons". Only abortion opponents are "unsafe"? Any idea that the university might DEFEND the free speech of their students against those who would attack it was of course right off the planet. Universities regularly give a lot of lip-service to free speech but the only "free speech" they actually defend is Leftist speech.

Just One Word Can Lose you your Job

But we all know what that word is. If you are black, you can (and probably will) use it all the time but if you are white you must never, never use it, even in anger and only in America. The High Court of Australia has recently ruled that the word "n*gger" is not offensive in Australia.

But an NYC legal employee of apparently Italian extraction used the word in an angry post on his MySpace page and Bloooie! He might as well have murdered someone.

I wonder what would happen if somebody used the word in its original Latin form: "niger". "Niger" is, of course the ordinary Latin word for "black". So anybody who spelt the word with one "g" would have an interesting legal defence.

Friday, August 04, 2006

"Te*nager", "Husb*nd" and "B*chelor" Wrong

It's Google again, I am afraid. A guy had the unmodified forms of the above words on his site so Google pulled their advertising from him. Apparently those words in conjunction sounded "pornographic" to Google's all-wise alogrithms. And you can't use a certain word meaning "to cause someone to die", either -- which rather limits a lot of news stories! And an article that mentions "sk*nheads" is automatically "racist". See here.

Advertising is big business of course and some people get significant revenue from ads that Google places on their web pages via its "AdSense" program. So when Google pulls its ads from a page it really hits some people -- generally those who can least afford it.

If Google does not like a page, they don't cancel all advertising. That would be too obvious. Instead they put up "public service" ads -- ads that make no money. I think you will see a few such ads here -- which is why the advertising revenue from this site is small.

I have never received a cent from advertising and I never will. I don't need the money. The revenue from the Google ads on this page goes to Scott, who uses it to pay the costs of the site. With over 100,000 comments up alone, this site does need a fair bit of webspace.

So Google censorship is doing what official censorship cannot: It is bowdlerizing the internet. Any web publisher who needs a buck has to be super careful of what he/she puts up. The lesson is of course an age-old one: Always diversify your sources of information as much as you can.

Fortunately, there are many websites -- particularly blogs -- that don't rely on advertising revenue so you can still find the good stuff if you look around.

"Tar Baby" Update

That good ol' double standard again

Taranto documents uses of the term "tar baby" by various Leftist sources. Needless to say, nobody in the media criticized them for using the expression. It is only conservatives who are not allowed to use it.

Readers Here Might Like to Know...

"When the ACLU wins a case against the Boy Scouts, the public display of the Ten Commandments, veterans memorials, and other symbols of American history and heritage guess who pays them? You do! However, there is current legislation going before the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, as well as a companion bill going before the House that is designed to put a stop to this.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Another "Tar baby" Downfall

The latest person to use that incorrect expression is none other than Mitt Romney, the RINO governor of Taxachusetts. See here.

"Tar baby" just means a "sticky problem" but tar is black, you see, and that is a VERY touchy color. I have mentioned this dreadful problem before. Romney is probably in good enough standing with the Left to be forgiven for it, though.

In commenting on the Romney affair, Taranto notes that you have to be careful about using the word "slope" as well. Some people call Asians "Slopes". So DEFINITELY don't use the expression "slippery slope" any more! You might be a "racist" if you do.

San Diego Cross Victory

Both the House and the Senate have now voted to acquire the San Diego cross memorial as Federal land. GWB will no doubt sign so those who were trying to get the cross taken down will now have to go back to square 1. Details here

The leader of New Zealand's main conservative party (Don Brash) said in a speech that prospective immigrants should "have a good command of English, or be willing to learn". See here. The Leftist New Zealand government called the comment "pejorative and insulting".

One of the representatives of New Zealand's Indians however gave the rather mild response that Brash's comments "showed he would prefer [immigrants] to come from English-speaking countries". Why so mild? Because a lot of Indians DO speak reasonable English so would get preference as immigrants if Brash were in charge!

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Hate Speech Against Ann Coulter OK

The usual double standard

As documented repeatedly on this blog, Leftists are always finding "hate speech" in things that conservatives say, even when a big stretch is needed to find some basis for the charge. But if calling someone an "evil crazy bitch" is not hate-speech, what would be? No stretch is needed to find the hate there. Yet that is just what Ann Coulter was recently called on the Letterman show. Details here.

"Yankee" and "Zulu" Incorrect

Apparently this is a story from last year but it was new to me so may be new to others:

There is a "spelt out" alphabet used in radio transmissions, on the telephone and on any occasion when speech may not be entirely clear. So A is Alfa, B is Bravo, C is Charlie etc.

And you can guess what Y and Z are. I am struggling to guess why but apparently those words are "insensitive" or something and are replaced in some quarters by Yellow and Zebra. Since Zebra is pronounced differently in American and British speech, that is a really dumb idea but who ever said that political correctness was smart?

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Disturbing Censorship

I guess most readers would have heard by now that Australian-born movie man Mel Gibson was arrested recently for drunk-driving. You might also have heard that he did a lot of mouthing off to the arresting officer -- including some classically antisemitic remarks.

Make of that what you will, but what do you make of this:

"Deputy James Mee's original arrest report was withheld from reporters by the Los Angeles County sheriff's department, however four pages were leaked yesterday to a Los Angeles gossip website....

Deputy Mee wrote a full report describing Gibson's behaviour and alleged anti-Semitic statements but superiors decided it was "inflammatory" and asked the officer to rewrite it."

The truth is "too inflammatory" even in police reports?? What price justice if that is the case?

There is now to be an investigation into the coverup. I hope that "investigation" does not mean "whitewash" but, whether it does or not, the chances of senior police suffering any serious penalty for their actions are vanishingly small. And practices that are not penalized are highly likely to continue.

Update

I have received the following thoughtful email from a reader:

"I disagree with your assessment of the Mel Gibson arrest. While I believe in the importance of a non-corrupt police force, it does not bother me that the cops tried to change a police report to protect Gibson's career.

Gibson drove drunk and acted extremely disorderly, but that happens hundreds of times every night across the US. I'm pretty sure that cops don't write down in detail everything a drunk says as he's getting hauled off to jail. Instead, police note the criminal facts of the case and describe whether that person co-operates or is belligerentt.

I assume that the senior officer after reading the report realized the magnitude of what could happen to Gibson, and determined that Gibson's anti-Semitic remarks would not make a difference in the DUI/resisting arrest case against him. He then changed the report to protect Gibson - not from the arrest, but from his (drunken) beliefs.

While many may argue that the senior officer should not have done this, just look at how the public reacted to this story. No one is upset at Gibson for the DUI. Very few are angered about the police changing the report. The majority determined that Gibson's number one crime is his antisemitic remarks made while he was wasted. These remarks, while wrong and offensive, are still not criminally punishable in the US. At least for now."

Dual Citizenship Debate Denounced as "Bigotry"

Once again we see "bigotry" and "racism" charges being used as a means to suppress debate -- this time in an article by someone named "Waleed Aly" writing in Australia's most Leftist mass-circulation newspaper -- the Melbourne "Age" -- also known for its heavy pro-homosexual bias.

The hostilities in Lebanon have brought to light the fact that a lot of Lebanese Muslims have gained Australian citizenship but also retain Lebanese citizenship and have gone back to live in Lebanon. They are only technically Australians. See, for instance, here.

The people concerned nonetheless seem to think that they have a right to be evacuated from Lebanon by the Australian government when the going gets tough. Lots of Australians however doubt that the Australian taxpayer should be paying for the welfare of such nominal Australians and have called for dual citizenship to be ended.

I can't see why that is not a reasonable question to be debated (I myself can see some merits in dual citizenship) but Mr Waleed Aly and "The Age" want to shut the debate down. Rather than take part in the debate they express horror at it and that is apparently meant to settle the matter.

Is the American national anthem politically incorrect? From the 4th verse:Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

Mohammad

The truth can be offensive to some but it must be said

"HATE SPEECH" is free speech: The U.S. Supreme Court stated the general rule regarding protected speech in Texas v. Johnson (109 S.Ct. at 2544), when it held: "The government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable." Federal courts have consistently followed this. Said Virginia federal district judge Claude Hilton: "The First Amendment does not recognize exceptions for bigotry, racism, and religious intolerance or ideas or matters some may deem trivial, vulgar or profane."

Even some advocacy of violence is protected by the 1st Amendment. In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously that speech advocating violent illegal actions to bring about social change is protected by the First Amendment "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

The double standard: Atheists can put up signs and billboards saying that Christianity is wrong and that is hunky dory. But if a Christian says that homosexuality is wrong, that is attacked as "hate speech"

One for the militant atheists to consider: "...it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" -- Thomas Jefferson

"I think no subject should be off-limits, and I regard the laws in many Continental countries criminalizing Holocaust denial as philosophically repugnant and practically useless – in that they confirm to Jew-haters that the Jews control everything (otherwise why aren’t we allowed to talk about it?)" -- Mark Steyn

Voltaire's most famous saying was actually a summary of Voltaire's thinking by one of his biographers rather than something Voltaire said himself. Nonetheless it is a wholly admirable sentiment: "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". I am of a similar mind.

The traditional advice about derogatory speech: "Sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you". Apparently people today are not as emotionally robust as their ancestors were.

Why conservatives should not respond to Leftist abuse: "Never wrestle with a pig, because you'll both just get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

The KKK were members of the DEMOCRATIC party. Google "Klanbake" if you doubt it

A phobia is an irrational fear, so the terms "Islamophobic" and "homophobic" embody a claim that the people so described are mentally ill. There is no evidence for either claim. Both terms are simply abuse masquerading as diagnoses and suggest that the person using them is engaged in propaganda rather than in any form of rational or objective discourse.

Leftists often pretend that any mention of race is "racist" -- unless they mention it, of course. But leaving such irrational propaganda aside, which statements really are racist? Can statements of fact about race be "racist"? Such statements are simply either true or false. The most sweeping possible definition of racism is that a racist statement is a statement that includes a negative value judgment of some race. Absent that, a statement is not racist, for all that Leftists might howl that it is. Facts cannot be racist so nor is the simple statement of them racist. Here is a statement that cannot therefore be racist by itself, though it could be false: "Blacks are on average much less intelligent than whites". If it is false and someone utters it, he could simply be mistaken or misinformed.

Categorization is a basic human survival skill so racism as the Left define it (i.e. any awareness of race) is in fact neither right nor wrong. It is simply human

Whatever your definition of racism, however, a statement that simply mentions race is not thereby racist -- though one would think otherwise from American Presidential election campaigns. Is a statement that mentions dogs, "doggist" or a statement that mentions cats, "cattist"?

If any mention of racial differences is racist then all Leftists are racist too -- as "affirmative action" is an explicit reference to racial differences

Was Abraham Lincoln a racist? "You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. It is better for both, therefore, to be separated." -- Spoken at the White House to a group of black community leaders, August 14th, 1862

Gimlet-eyed Leftist haters sometimes pounce on the word "white" as racist. Will the time come when we have to refer to the White House as the "Full spectrum of light" House?

The spirit of liberty is "the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." and "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it." -- Judge Learned Hand

Mostly, a gaffe is just truth slipping out

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

It seems a pity that the wisdom of the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus is now little known. Remember, wrote the Stoic thinker, "that foul words or blows in themselves are no outrage, but your judgment that they are so. So when any one makes you angry, know that it is your own thought that has angered you. Wherefore make it your endeavour not to let your impressions carry you away."

"Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?" -- English poet John Milton (1608-1674) in Areopagitica

Leftists can try to get you fired from your job over something that you said and that's not an attack on free speech. But if you just criticize something that they say, then that IS an attack on free speech

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) could have been speaking of much that goes on today when he said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here